


A Most Peculiar Way

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q Reverse Bang, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astronaut Bond becomes attached to the voice on the other end of the line--with two hundred thirty thousand miles between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Most Peculiar Way

**Author's Note:**

> Another one written for [the 00Q Reverse Bang](http://00qreversebang.tumblr.com/)\--when there was an author drop out, I couldn't stand the idea of anyone not having a fic written, much less the person who'd gone to so much trouble to put the whole thing together! It wasn't a chore; [the inspiration was incredible](http://lebearpolarr.tumblr.com/post/105749910119/title-spaceman-for-00qreversebang)! I was so pleased to get a chance to work with this artist, too, and this fic was a blast to write.
> 
>  

The first time he hears that voice, James Bond is quite busy staring at Eve Moneypenny’s arse.  She being composed of nearly seventy percent legs and some not insignificant portion of the other thirty a tight, sweet little arse he can imagine bouncing a fifty pence piece off of, he doesn’t reckon many could blame him, but—

The impact takes him by surprise, scalding tea only secondary to the thump of a body against his chest and the crash of that body bouncing off to land among the chairs of a nearby table.  The boffin glaring up at him looks livid, and Bond can no more help the smirk that turns up the corner of his lip than he could have helped staring at Moneypenny’s arse just a moment ago.

“Would you kindly watch where the hell you’re going?” the boffin snaps, clambering up from the floor all knobby elbows.  The tea has left a dark stain down the side of his shirt; now that it’s starting to cool, Bond spares a glance for the stain on his own and raises an eyebrow.

“Thirsty?”  There are two paper cups on the floor, and if anything the reminder of the spilled tea makes the boffin’s scowl worse.

“Bringing tea for a coworker, because I respect the people I work with,” he says tartly, and Bond grins.

“I don’t—”

“I wouldn’t presume to know,” the boffin cuts in.  “Seeing as how I’ve never seen you here before in my life.  You must be new.”

And Bond laughs, the sound rich and full.  “Or, little boffin, you were hired during my sabbatical and it is, in fact, you who are new.”  The boffin’s face falls.  “Oh, don’t take it like that.  Let me buy you more tea.”

“I can take care of myself.”  The boffin’s clearly trying for dignity, stamping off in squelchy shoes and dripping tea.  “Astronaut meatheads,” Bond hears faintly as he goes and his grin gets wider.

It’s three days later when he’s finally introduced to the guidance team and Bond spies a familiar face glaring at him from the crowd.  Major Boothroyd is skimming through his list of remarkable agents, the men and women Bond will speak to on the bridge, when he gets to the young man with dark, curly hair and clever green eyes.  He still looks a bit miffed, and when Bond offers his hand, the boffin stares at it as if it were a dead rat.  

“Bond,” Bond introduces himself.  “James Bond.”

The boffin sniffs, looking for all the world like he’d leave Bond hanging if Boothroyd weren’t standing so close.  “Q,” he says finally.  “You can call me Q.”  He takes Bond’s hand limply, but he doesn’t wince when Bond crushes his in a firm handshake, and Bond has to admire a man like that.

“Oh, you’ll be wonderful working together, boys,” Boothroyd says cheerfully.

It’s hate at first sight.  

::

“And you adjust the earpiece like so,” Boothroyd tells him, moving the device on Bond’s ear until suddenly it sinks into place, unobtrusive and sleekly fitted.  Boothroyd gives a satisfied hum when Bond stops fiddling with it, tapping carefully at the buttons that control the settings.  The earpiece comes on with a piercing whine that leaves Bond temporarily deaf to Boothroyd’s enthusiastic explanation of the device; when his hearing filters in, he can hear—

“So,” Q says in his ear.  He must have forgot he had his headset on, Bond realises, and he can hear the muffled voice in the background of the person he’s talking to.  Q is quiet, listening, then, “I was really impressed by the work you did on—”

Boothroyd’s hand slides in front of Bond’s eyes and he focuses.  “Now pay attention, Commander Bond.  This part is especially important.”

In the earpiece, Q pauses.  “I’m fascinated by the work you’ve done with endothermic reactions.  Do you really think—?”  And some part of Bond wants to tune him out because he can feel in his gut where this conversation is going, but he finds himself cheering Q on.  “—maybe you could tell me a little more about it over dinner sometime?”

The silence is toxic.  Bond doesn’t listen for a response because Q’s as well as got one, but even so he hears Q’s voice, tinny—“Ah.  That’s okay, then.  Some other time.”—as he hands the earpiece back to Boothroyd.  Boothroyd takes it, confused, and later, Bond sees him having a quiet word with Q.  Q stands silent, flushed to the tips of his ears and humiliation in every line of him; Bond catches his eye and Q looks away.

::

“I didn’t think a human man could contain that much vomit.  Oh my god, it was like,” Q trails off, eyes lit with mirth.  Bond scowls—or tries to, though his gut heaves again; Q, angel of mercy that he is, inches back out of the splash zone and cackles again—but Q continues his play-by-play: “At first, I thought you were just pulling funny faces, and then the Major said he thought you might actually be hurt, so he slowed the machine and—well, at least you held it in until you stopped!  That’s a machine worth millions, and the poor interns would have been scrubbing your sick out for weeks!  Can you imagine all the nooks and crannies yesterday’s supper can find when you’re whizzing around at 6G?  Eurgh.”

“Your kindness is exemplary, Q,” Bond tells him, or tries to, though it’s rather broken up by another heave.  “You’re a veritable Florence Nightingale.”

“I do try,” Q tells him, and for the first time Bond registers the damp cloth at his brow, the stabilising hand at his shoulder.  Q walks him all the way back to the showers, and he doesn’t even complain about the smell, which Bond knows is never coming out of that tacky orange cardigan.

::

“I wonder what it’ll be like,” Bond sighs, sinking back against the steps.  Above them is the telescope, the dome, the stars.  

“You’ll know soon enough,” Q replies.  “If you’re not going to drink it, hand it back.”

Bond cuddles around the whisky bottle instead.  The blue bow Q’d wrapped around it is listing sadly from the neck, and Bond tugs at a loop contemplatively.  “I don’t think I’m meant to be drinking the night before.  I think I’m meant to be sleeping, resting up.”

“Sleep when you’re dead.  Drink with me now; you’re going to be gone for a month, and when you come back you’ll be too famous to hang out with a lowly tech like me.”

“A lowly tech who flies starships for a living,” Bond snorts.  Q’s fingers sneak around the bottle in his grasp and he swigs from the mouth before letting him steal it.  “You can’t just take that.  You gave it to me.”

“You can’t take it with you, spaceman.  Better drink it all tonight,” Q warns, and Bond snickers at his whisky face when he slugs straight from the bottle.

“You drink like you’re in Uni.”

“You’re going to vom in your spacesuit tomorrow.”

“You’ll get to listen to it.  In high definition.”

“Ah, but I’ll be here on Earth with the paracetamol,” Q finishes triumphantly.  He has a point.

Bond touches his fingers to his forehead, ruffling his own hair quietly.  “I wonder what it’ll be like,” he repeats.

He can hear Q sitting up, and when he looks over, Q is staring at the stars.  In the dark light, his skin is luminous, and his long, arched throat bobs as he tips his head back.  “Dark.  Cold.  You’ll be by yourself, a single point in space, the farthest point from humanity you’ll ever go.  Will you be lonely?”

“No.”  

He wakes with Q’s head on his shoulder; his mouth tastes of dead things and ashes, and when he wakes Q he only shakes his curls from his eyes, adjusts his glasses, and grins like hangovers don’t affect him.

“We are so not supposed to be in here,” Q chortles gleefully.

::

His first day in space is.  He doesn’t know what to think.  Getting used to no gravity takes more energy than he’s ever imagined, and he kind of wants to curl into a ball and sleep.  A ball that doesn’t move, strapped into his bench bed because the disorientation is starting to get to him and now feels like a terrible time to remember the bottle of whisky he’d shared—

It takes him a moment to notice the quiet humming in his ear, longer to recognise the song.  “This is ground control to Major Tom,” Bond quips back.  Q laughs quietly in his ear.

“The Major’s gone to bed.  I’m head of night crew—something about showing up for work this morning still drunk,” Q tells him, and Bond laughs.

“Lush.”

“Who was it got me sauced on the floor of the observatory, anyway?” Q muses.  “Oops.  Shit, these lines are being recorded.  For the record, Commander Bond is entirely heterosexual and did not inebriate a much younger, much cuter guidance team tech with the intent of doing him inside a government facility that was totally supposed to be secured for the night.  Did not, I said.”

“That you know,” Bond retorts.  Q’s laugh is bright.

“Oh, you’ll get my hopes up!”  He can hear Q shifting at his station, then a slurp of tea.  “So how’s space?  Is it everything you ever dreamed of?”

“Dark.  Cold.  I’m the farthest from home I’ve ever been,” Bond tells him.  Through the glass, he can see the blue marble of the Earth; he waves, but he doesn’t figure Q can see him.

“Lonely?”  Q’s voice is thoughtful, soft.

“Nah.”  

::

“It’s beautiful up here,” he tells Q, awed.  When he looks below, he imagines he can see Europe, can see England, can see home.  Somewhere to the left there—“I’m looking at you right now.”

“You’ve got damned better eyes than I have, then,” Q tells him.  

“Course I do.  That’s why I’m an astronaut.  You have to be in peak physical form just to apply for the job, after all,” Bond replies, and Q snorts.

“I don’t know how you managed to make the cut with that fat head of yours, then.”

“Admit you’re intimidated by my physical perfection!” Bond all but sings back.  He can hear Q laughing under his breath.  “You find me dashing!”

“Oh, yes.”  Q manages to sound both wholly insincere and bored at the same time; Bond imagines he can hear him filing his nails, a surefire sign Q is only pretending.  If he were really bored, he’d hand off the comms, but he never does.  “You manly, manly man, you.  So—oof, so masculine.  Your wiles.  I can’t take them.”

“As long as you admit it,” Bond says confidently.  Q sniggers again.  “Twenty-four days until I’m home again,” Bond reminds him suddenly.  He’s not—he just wants to say.

“I’ll mark my calendar,” Q says.  “If there’s nothing good on TV.”

::

He’s busiest at night, then when the shifts change, during the mid-afternoon.  In the absence of a dawn, he follows Q through his day like a sunflower, hours of idle chatter.  When they take Q off the rotation on the comms and slot in another scientist, Bond remembers to be careful, to always take care of his experiments, of the useful bits of his task hours before he sleeps; he spends days rolling in space with a book, and when Q comes back he can almost recite the St. Crispin’s Day speech to him from memory.

“Doesn’t count.  You’re English; it’s practically tattooed in your marrow as a child.”  Q sounds especially derisive, days of vitriol saved up without an outlet.

“Scottish,” Bond corrects.

“Scottish!”  He can see Q’s scandalised expression now, the way he’s clutched his chest.  “You led me on!”

“Alas, it was naught but a Highland Fling,” Bond agrees.  Q’s laughter is refreshingly familiar.

“I have a question for you.”  Q sounds serious, almost nervous, and Bond flashes back to a quiet proposal he should never have heard.  His blood feels fizzy in his head.

“Shoot,” he says, and he’s sure his casual tone doesn’t fool anyone.

“What do Scotsmen wear under their kilts?”

Bond’s breath is half relief, half laughter.  “Randy little minx, aren’t you?”

“It’s just it’s maybe the only chance I’ll ever get to know!” Q says, but it’s distorted with laughter.

“You really want an answer?” Bond asks.

“Yes.”

“Not a damned thing.”

He’s missed those bright peals of laughter.

::

“You’ve passed the halfway point today, Bond,” Q tells him.  “Two weeks in space.  Any adverse effects?”

“I’ve grown attached to snarky little nerds.  I think it’s the lack of oxygen.”

“I’m afraid to tell you we found a propensity for nerd-affection in your medical examination.  It’s a little-known genetic predisposition—I’m sorry, but it’s very likely you liked nerds before going into space.”

“Doctor!  Is there a cure?”

“Well, some afflicted attempt to self-medicate by behaving like raging arseholes, but apparently it doesn’t always work,” Q replies sadly.  

“What about atomic wedgies?” Bond asks.

“Hah!  See if I wear pants around you from now on!”  Q’s voice is glib until he realises what he’s said.  “Oh, shit.  Let’s pretend I never raised the issue of my pants with you, okay?”

Bond just laughs.

::

“Tell me a story.”  The berth is hard beneath him, the straps around his rib cage stifling.

“Once there was a little spaceman who wouldn’t go to sleep,” Q starts, laughing quietly.

“Couldn’t,” Bond corrects.

“—couldn’t go to sleep,” Q agrees.

“Was he handsome?  This spaceman?  I imagine he wasn’t too little; I mean, he’s never had complaints before—”

“Oh, very, very handsome, but cursed with the teeniest, most infinitesimally small cock ever.  There were medical studies.  They involved an electron microscope.  It was a little bit tragic.”

“Twat,” Bond says, but even he can hear the affection in it.

“So the very, very small little spaceman couldn’t go to sleep.  He decided to call his much, much smarter friend for help.  ‘Q!’ said the spaceman who disappointed ladies regularly.”

“Oh!  Much, much smarter?”  Despite the giggles, Bond can feel his lids growing heavy.

“So much smarter.  Did you want a story, or did you want to interrupt me every ten seconds until I figure out a way to bludgeon you from two hundred thirty thousand miles away?”

“How far is that in kilometers?”

“Arsehole.”

“That’s a new number I’ve never heard of.  Is it more or less than a googolplex?”  Bond shifts on the berth, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Goodnight, James,” Q says very quietly.

::

“Here am I sitting in my tin can far above the world,” Bond hums.  Across the comms, Q hums with him, idly.  He knows Q is doing paperwork at his station, can hear the pen scratching against the paper.  Q puts the pen down.

“Would you do it again?” he asks.  Bond thinks.

“Perhaps.  For a holiday?”

“Yes,” Q clarifies.  “On holiday, all alone.  Except there’d be that big fuckoff huge tour group standing in the way every time you went to take a photo of the Earth, wouldn’t there?”

“Always is,” Bond agrees ruefully.  “Maybe not alone.”

“No?”

“Would you be there on comms still?” Bond asks.

“Not if you’re shagging someone,” Q says with a snort.  “On your romantic getaway.”

“Why not?  You’ve listened each time I wanked,” Bond tells him, just to imagine the twist of his face.  Q doesn’t disappoint.

“You slag!”  He’s laughing, though, and Bond joins him.  “Really?”

“No.  Could you imagine where all that mess would go in zero gravity?”

“Eurgh,” Q supplies helpfully.  “Now I can.”

“Well, you’ve got more experience with random gobs of gism floating by, I’d imagine,” Bond accedes.  Q makes an indignant sound.  “I’m not saying you’re a trollop….”

“I’ll have you know I’ve been perfectly chaste since you went up in the air!”

“Waiting for Jamie to come home from the war?” Bond asks, and Q’s laugh takes a confirming shape.  “Such an obedient young thing.”

“Fuck off and do some fucking work for once, you lie-about,” Q says sternly, and when Bond goes to respond, he finds he’s been muted.  With a grumble, he goes to work on his tests.

::

There is a storm at the end of the third week, bits of hyper-powered dust and chunks of space rock whizzing past.  It’s the most terrifying thing he’s ever seen, and that includes the time his submarine had gone down and he’d had to drag himself back to the surface in the wake of its great, sucking pull.  Bond watches the debris spit by for long seconds, the little station rocked and buffeted by the movement until he’s sure he’s going to have a collision and the entire thing is going to shake to pieces.

He wants to talk to Q, but it’s Boothroyd on the comm, Boothroyd fascinated by his descriptions of the debris and the creaks and groans of the station.  Bond pretends it’s just dizziness and not nerves that causes the nausea that keeps him from answering—“Is it striking the station?  How large would you estimate the pieces to be?  How large a piece do you think it would take to pierce the station’s protective hull?”—as he loses his rehydrated lunch in a tube designed for the purpose.  Q’s vastly overestimated the silliness of being sick in space, and when he’s done Bond curls the hose carefully, stores it properly, and turns on his berth, strapping himself in.  He’ll find out if he survives the storm in the morning; there’s little he can do now.

::

The plants on the station are dying.  Each limp, yellow frond is a little bit of a punch to the gut, no matter how much he tries not to let it affect him.  They’re the only other living things this far from home, and he’s quiet as he reports in.

“Another tray gone today,” Bond says, and Q makes a soft sound of acknowledgement.  It’s a day shift today, so they have to behave, and Q is playing dutiful tech as he jots down Bond’s report.  “I—all the third bank, now.  They’re all dead.”

“You’re watering them appropriately,” Q says for the recording.  Bond nods.

“Yes.  I’m tending them exactly as I was shown.”

Q makes a thoughtful sound.  “These things happen, Commander Bond.  I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Later, when it’s just the two of them, Q is quiet.  “I’m sorry about the plants, Bond.”

Bond sighs.  “I shouldn’t be concerned about it.  I don’t know why—”

“Because a thing has died.  One of few things past the edge of humanity with you has died,” Q says.  And yes, put simply, it makes sense.  “But there are other plants, and someone always on the communication lines.  There’s me.  You’re never truly alone, you know.”

“Even when I piss,” Bond says.  The humour is weak.

“Especially when you piss,” Q responds just as Bond knew he would, and he can hear the Groucho Marx eyebrow wiggle over the earpiece.

“I’m pissing right now,” he tells him, and Q squawks with exaggerated disgust.

“You perv!  You have the right to request a private moment, you know.”  Q’s voice drops, becomes more gentle.  “And me.  If you ever want to talk to me, you have the right to ask.  They’ll call me wherever I am and I can come talk to you.  I will, too.  Unless you call while I’m getting it from someone cute, in which case you’re on your own for another twenty to thirty minutes.”  Bond laughs.  “Six days.  You only have to make it another six days,” Q reminds him, and Bond smiles to himself.

::

He finds his breath is coming short, his chest tight.  When he reports, Boothroyd’s voice is bright as he tells him it’s just the stresses of being in orbit for so long.

“The human body was developed on Earth,” he tells Bond, “and designed to suit her in minutiae.  You’re just feeling the stress of an extended holiday away.  Nothing to worry about.”

When Q comes on later, his cheer is so false it rings hollow immediately.  He sounds like his cheeks have been stapled into a grin, and under each word is worry.  “It’s just you’ve been away for so long,” Q tells him.  “You’ll be alright.  It’s nearly time to come home.”

“Toeing the party line?” Bond accuses.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”  Q sounds tired, worried, with a thin veneer of encouragement over top.  “You’re going to die horrifically.  The station is going to blow up.  Kaboom.”

“Is it really?”  And Bond knows Q wouldn’t tell him that way if it were, wouldn’t be so cold or so cruel, but.

Q is silent.  “No.  Not really.”

“But it’s just as bad.”  He’s sure of this.

“There’s,” Q pauses.  “I’ll be fired for this, I hope you know.”

“Tell me, Q.  Honestly.  Don’t I deserve to know how I’m going to die?”

“There’s a leak.”

“A leak!”  It’s like being punched in the chest.

“Just a small one!  It’s not—not a structural integrity issue.  It’s, um.  A seal.  It’s been jostled—we don’t know how; perhaps the storm recently—and you’re.  Leaking.”  Q says the word with hopeless finality.

“Like a colostomy bag,” Bond says flatly.

Q puffs a distressed laugh.  “Disgusting in the face of imminent dea—danger.”

Bond swallows.

::

Because it’s clear, by now, isn’t it?  It’s clear he’s going to die here, lungs cramping for air like lost space rubbish, his cold and eventually frozen corpse spinning inside this metal egg until he finally falls from the sky.  The temperature is dropping; he’s in his suit almost all the time, though it makes the communicator staticky.  That’s fine, though—it’s absolutely fine, because Bond doesn’t have any interest in talking to Boothroyd after he hears the bollocking Q got for telling him about his own impending death.  He knows Q’s still there in the background—“Get back to your desk and you’ll be lucky you aren’t court martialed,” Boothroyd had snarled—and he strains to hear him.  He can’t.

It’s lonely.  The plants are dying quicker now, or they were when Bond still bothered to check on them.  It kills him to think of their shriveled, limp forms in the tray; some of the leaves are going black, curling in on themselves.  He sympathises.

“I want to talk to Q,” he says suddenly, interrupting whatever it is Boothroyd is saying about maintaining the standards of the experiments until the last moment.  He has three days left in the station, perhaps one and a half of oxygen left inside, and a tank that will last twelve hours if he’s lucky.  He wants to talk to his friend before he dies.

“That’s not advisable,” Boothroyd says, and.

“He promised.  He told me that any time I wanted to talk to him, I could ask and you’d fetch him.  I want to talk to him,” Bond insists.  He knows he’s being a child, but.

Boothroyd is silent.  The comms go dark a minute, and then.  “Q here.  How’re you holding up, Bond?”

“Are you in so very much trouble?” Bond asks softly.  Q’s chuckle is low.

“Let’s just say there won’t be any science centers dedicated in my name and leave it at that.”

“That’s bullshit,” Bond says suddenly.  He feels dizzy, but whether it’s anger or lack of oxygen, he’s not sure.  “You were the only—the most human of them.  The only one who would tell me; don’t I deserve to be told?”

“Of course you do, James,” Q agrees, and.  It’s not patronising, not—Bond sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“I want to be able to talk to you whenever I want,” Bond tells him.  He can hear Boothroyd’s protests in the background, but.  “Oh, come off it, Major.  I do outrank you, and it’s only for another day and a half, anyway.  Consider it a dying man’s last wish.”

Q gives a broken little sigh in his ear.

::

“Tell me a story,” Bond asks.  It’s late, but the others are still listening in.  He doesn’t care.

“Once there was a little spaceman who was,” Q starts, then pauses.  Clears his throat, and begins again, stronger, but still quiet.  “Once there was a little spaceman, and very soon he was going to be going on a very long trip.  It was a beautiful trip, across the stars and past the planets, and through the very center of a black hole.  He knew he would not be coming back.”

When Bond breathes, the air is thin.  “He didn’t want to go on the trip.”

“No,” Q agrees.  “But there was nothing for it, for there were people on the other side of the black hole who were waiting for him, to take him off and show him the rest of the universe.  It was an important trip.”

“Was it?”

Q laughs a little.  “Yes.  The most important trip of the little spaceman’s whole life.  He would soon know everything to ever happen, meet everyone to ever live.  The little spaceman would become stardust.”

“That’s beautiful.”

He pretends he can’t hear Q’s tears.

::

His breath is little more than rasps when he slips the mask over his face.  For a second, the flood of oxygen is almost erotic, dizzying in its relief.  Bond clutches the edge of his berth until it groans in his grasp, then swings himself over.  It’s a ridiculously macho move—performed in zero gravity, he doesn’t so much leap as gently swirl to his feet, and there’s no one to watch him play cowboy.  Q’s not even on the comms; exhausted, he’d been sent to bed by Bond somewhere near t-minus seven hours, and he knows that he won’t be back until closer to the deadline.  He couldn’t convince him to stay away.

Bond digs through the toolkit, but the truth is, he doesn’t quite know what he needs.  He just knows that he can’t—that he won’t—sit here and wait to die.  There’s a chance he’ll make a mistake, a chance that he’ll go before Q gets back and he knows Q will never forgive him if it happens, but he has to.  He has to, and he thinks that maybe Q would understand after all.

“Have you secured yourself with the anchoring cable, Commander Bond?” Boothroyd asks, and Bond nods, though he knows he can’t see him.  Just to be sure, he spins the lock, secures himself.

“Yes.”

“Good.  You’re going to ease yourself out— ”

It’s quick, easily the quickest hour he’s ever spent; he’s dizzy, and at one point Major Boothroyd breaks in, gently: “Don’t gulp so much air, Commander Bond.  You do want to make it last.”  He feels the moment the seal reengages like a click that reverberates through his fingertips up his arm and into his shoulder.  He clings to the side of the station and sobs.

Q is furious when he comes back.  He shouts down the roof, and for the first time Bond puts down the earpiece; when it goes silent, he puts it back in.  Q is weeping.

::

In the end, his return is almost anticlimactic: he begins his descent, and it’s not unlike the storm as the station shakes and vibrates around him.  There are creaking, groaning noises, and he clings to his oxygen tank like the lifeline it is, waiting for either death or salvation; the station hits the water with an almighty crack and he’s acting on impulse, climbing to the top and shielding his eyes from the beacons that flash to alert the crew looking for him.  It’s a quick retrieval, and that’s just fine by him.  Suddenly, he wants nothing more than to go home.

It’s a long flight back to the home operations base, and Bond sleeps on the plane.  He has a whisky that makes him think of Q, dozes while the doctors and scientists try to determine what effects, if any, being in space have had on him.  There’ll be a full examination later, but for now, he sinks into the seat and travels the last few miles home.

Boothroyd and his team are waiting for him when he arrives, huge grins and cheers and pats on the shoulder all around, but Q.

Standing at the edge of the crowd, Q is all wide eyes and trembling, white lips.  His curls dip, wobble, and then he’s rushing, flinging himself at Bond.  And Bond lets him, curls him into his arms like a precious, cosseted thing; the heat of his body is shocking after the cold numb of space, thawing something he hadn’t realised was half-frozen.  Q’s still half-mumbling, “don’t you ever”s and “I’d never forgive you”s mixed and shaking as he tries to nuzzle his way in deeper.

Q’s mouth doesn’t taste like stardust.  It’s not elegant or beautiful, it’s salty with tears and slick with too much saliva; they bump noses when Bond goes in and Q tries to ask him what he’s doing, then clack teeth when they both try to move too fast, to close the impossible final inches of space between them after hundreds of thousands of miles.  That doesn’t make it not perfect; flashbulbs pop around them with little puffs of smoke.  Bond pulls Q tighter, molds his body closer until their individual shaking slows, syncs and merges, and Bond can feel it: his orbit changes.

 


End file.
